Here the servant stopped; for, to his astonishment, he saw Nanina suddenly turn away from him, and then heard her crying bitterly as she went back into the house.

Marta Angrisani had huddled on her clothes and was looking at herself in the glass to see that she was sufficiently presentable to appear at the palace, when she felt two arms flung round her neck; and, before she could say a word, found Nanina sobbing on her bosom.

“He is ill—­he is in danger!” cried the girl.  “I must go with you to help him.  You have always been kind to me, Marta—­be kinder than ever now.  Take me with you—­take me with you to the palace!”

“You, child!” exclaimed the nurse, gently unclasping her arms.

“Yes—­yes! if it is only for an hour,” pleaded Nanina; “if it is only for one little hour every day.  You have only to say that I am your helper, and they would let me in.  Marta!  I shall break my heart if I can’t see him, and help him to get well again.”

The nurse still hesitated.  Nanina clasped her round the neck once more, and laid her cheek—­burning hot now, though the tears had been streaming down it but an instant before—­close to the good woman’s face.

“I love him, Marta; great as he is, I love him with all my heart and soul and strength,” she went on, in quick, eager, whispering tones; “and he loves me.  He would have married me if I had not gone away to save him from it.  I could keep my love for him a secret while he was well; I could stifle it, and crush it down, and wither it up by absence.  But now he is ill, it gets beyond me; I can’t master it.  Oh, Marta! don’t break my heart by denying me!  I have suffered so much for his sake, that I have earned the right to nurse him!”

Marta was not proof against this last appeal.  She had one great and rare merit for a middle-aged woman—­she had not forgotten her own youth.

“Come, child,” said she, soothingly; “I won’t attempt to deny you.  Dry your eyes, put on your mantilla; and, when we get face to face with the doctor, try to look as old and ugly as you can, if you want to be let into the sick-room along with me.”

The ordeal of medical scrutiny was passed more easily than Marta Angrisani had anticipated.  It was of great importance, in the doctor’s opinion, that the sick man should see familiar faces at his bedside.  Nanina had only, therefore, to state that he knew her well, and that she had sat to him as a model in the days when he was learning the art of sculpture, to be immediately accepted as Marta’s privileged assistant in the sick-room.